Hope everyone's Christmas was lovely, mine certainly was! I got to spend some time with my parents, before the big day, which made Christmas feel much more whole for me.
I 'helped' my mom make donuts. She does the actual making, and once they are fried, I shook them in the cinnamon and sugar combo to coat them -- that's always been my job since I was little. It is a help though, it means mom doesn't have to stop frying to coat them, cause if you let them cool too much then the sugar just doesn't stick to the donuts.
Last year I had a terrible cold the week before Christmas, so I only saw my parents Christmas eve, and part of Christmas day. I felt cheated. I barely got any rappie pie and not one single donut. When I realised after Christmas that I'd missed out on my mom's donuts completely I literally sobbed my dismay to Chris. He totally didn't get it. But mom only makes donuts at Christmas. And they are fantastic! They're a 'tea time' donut, meant to be eaten the day they are made. The nutmeg in them is what makes them delicious, well that and the cinnamon and sugar coating on the outside. They are kinda like Tim Horton's Old Fashioned Plain donut, only with a coating. Though Timmie's has nothing on my mom's donuts.
So yeah, this year I got my fill of donuts. Or at least I had enough to satisfy my craving. I also got to have lots and lots of rappie pie. So very good! So very filling. So very strange, really, if you aren't used to it. It's basically meat and potatoes. But it's about as close to shepard's pie as Quittach is to soccer. lol.
I really enjoyed Christmas this year. We didn't have to rush, and everyone pitched in to help my mom with dinner. Chris and I helped with some of the set-up, and my aunts helped with the clean-up, which meant my mom didn't have to do everything herself. I haven't actually had a chance to talk to her since, but I'm hoping Christmas didn't leave her as drained as it did last year. She seemed to be holding up pretty well when we left at 5pm, which was well after our Christmas dinner. Though we call it dinner, it's always a late-ish lunch at about 2pm. That way we eat, we sit and talk, and about the time it's getting dark everyone is about ready to go home. Which works out perfectly for my young cousins who were there and my uncle who is in his 80s. And frankly for mom and Pa who are no longer spring chickens themselves, though I think they do far better than many people their age.
Christmas, for me, is all about family, and getting to spend it with my family and my husband was very very happy making. We even got to spend boxing day with our adopted family of Toronto friends, which was totally awesome!
This New Years Eve we are going to party held by our aforementioned Toronto friends. It's a theme party - tarts and vicars! I'm very much looking forward to it. Thanks to Halloween's past Chris already has his costume, mine is more up in the air. I'm sure I'll come up with something sufficiently tarty. If I had more time/energy/money I would totally be tempted to buy an outrageous wig, and some fake press on nails. lol. But I think I'll have to make do with what's already in my closets. I wish I had my tall boots in Toronto, but we had way too much to carry home Christmas day for me to bring them from Hamilton sadly.
And because I just can't not mention it, my mom gave us the most wonderful Christmas gift!! I know it's not supposed to be about gifts, and it's not, really, it's the thought behind it that has me all gushy. After we got married this last October, I confessed to my mom that even though we said no physical gifts, what I really wanted, was for my mom to buy me nice silverware. I have absolutely no luck in picking out silverware. I've bought some before for work, twice even, and both times they so did not work out. They rusted! They tasted of metallic decay! It was awful! My mom on the other hand has lovely taste in silverware. And I still remember when I was quite young, and one of my cousins was getting married. Mom bought him and his new wife silverware and a lovely wooden case for it. From that moment on, in my head, that was thee most perfect wedding gift. Nothing more was said, time went on, Chris and I last week bought ourselves a set of silverware while at Ikea -- we've wanted something better than what we have for some time, but the wedding came first. Since we were there (IKEA) we thought we'd pick something up that looked good. Thankfully we didn't get around to opening it as Christmas morning we found not one, but three sets of beautiful, simple, elegant silverware under the tree from my mom and pa!! Ironically the silverware mom picked looks almost exactly like the set I picked at Ikea that they didn't have any of. They had it on display, but we couldn't find a package of it. Mom said she'd liked another better, but they didn't have enough, so she got this one, remembering I like things plain. She picked perfectly. I love love love them. I know, considering I told her I wanted her to pick them for me only two months before I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was! I really really was. And what a wonderful surprise indeed!
It's a little morbid, but I know I'm not going to have my mom and pa forever. They are getting on in years. And although they may be with me for the next ten years, give or take, I (hopefully) will be around a lot longer... And the idea of having something so lovely, that I will use every day, to remind me of her is just a wonderful thought. So she'll never be 100% gone. I'm a physical person.. having a physical something that says 'mom loves me' around, is worth its weight in gold, as they say.
So yeah, Christmas was great! And I'm hoping NYE will be equally as fun.
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